Professor Virginia Slaughter – Professor and Head of School

Virginia joined UQ in 1996. She is the Founding Director of the Early Cognitive Development Centre within the School of Psychology. Her research focuses on social and cognitive development in infants and young children. She has been the recipient of several teaching and research awards including an Australian Award for University Teaching and a UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award.

I earned a PhD in developmental psychology from UC Berkeley and then completed a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1996 I moved to the University of Queensland and I have been here continuously since then. My husband is Ted McFadden and our children are Katie, age 21; Rorie, age 18 and Brian, age 12.

Australian Award for University Teaching in the category Teaching Large First Year Classes

University of Queensland Foundation Research Excellence Award

University of Queensland Teaching Excellence Award

Australian Psychological Society Early Career Research Excellence Award

Professor Virginia Slaughter

Research Activities:

Overview:

It is remarkable how quickly human beings learn to negotiate the social environment into which they are born. Infants’ interpersonal skills, including mutual gaze and imitation, are effective enough to inspire caregivers to attend to their every need. Toddlers already recognise that other people are sentient entities whose minds contain unique perspectives on the world. Moving into childhood, social understanding becomes increasingly complex as it is intertwined with language and cultural practices and applies to larger and more diverse groups of people. My research documents these developmental stages and explores how biological factors and everyday experiences contribute to children’s learning in this domain.

Yours and mine: development of the concept of ownership in typical children and those on the autism spectrum (ARC Discovery Project 2013-2015; Kritikos, Slaughter, Sofronoff & Bayliss)

Charting the prevalence, time course and social-cognitive correlates of neonatal imitation (ARC Discovery Project 2008-2012; Slaughter, Nielsen & Suddendorf). Initial outcomes of this project are discussed in a podcast produced by the Delta Centre at the University of Iowa. Access at https://deltacenter.uiowa.edu/deltacasts.

Longbottom, S. & Slaughter, V. (2016). Everyday experience and the development of biological knowledge. Early Education and Development (Special Issue on Young Children's Developing Understanding of the Biological World), http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2016.1169822.

Peterson, C., Slaughter, V., & Paynter, J. (2007). Social maturity and theory of mind in typically developing children and those on the autism spectrum. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 48, 1243-1250.

Slaughter, V. & Griffiths, M. (2007). Death understanding and fear of death in young children. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 12, 525-535.

Slaughter, V., & Suddendorf, T. (2007). Participant loss due to “fussiness” in infant visual paradigms: A review of the last 20 years. Infant Behavior and Development, 30, 505-514.

Cognitive development - children`s concepts, knowledge of numbers, research methods in developmental psychology. Social development - children`s understanding of their own and others` minds, development of self-concept. Infant cognition - methods for testing babies, infants` social knowledge.

Note: Coordinator roles prior to 2009 and tutor roles prior to 2006 are not included.

Research Area:

Developmental Psychology

Synopsis:

General areas of interest: cognitive development in infancy and early childhood; theory of mind and early social development; development of knowledge about the human body; development of biological concepts; early numerical knowledge.

My preference is to negotiate with students about the project they wish to undertake in Honours. We normally spend the first few weeks discussing mutual interests, before settling on a topic.

Most of my Honours students do developmental research, recruiting and testing infants and/or children through the Early Cognitive Development Centre or via local daycare centres and schools. Contrary to rumour, it is not especially difficult or otherwise disadvantagous to carry out a developmental project, as we have excellent systems in place to ensure that students can recruit a good-sized sample within the Honours timeframe.